Screengrab 2011

New Media Arts Award Winners

Artist’s statement:

Nostalgia turns the memories of a teenage summer into a hazy dream of fireworks, swimming pools and carnival rides. Summertime Flies is the result of collaboration between sound artist Nathan Halverson and video artist J. Robinson. The pair documented their summer travels, often several states apart, with camera phones and other low cost consumer recording devices. They exchanged files through email and created work based on each others documentation. This is the final product of that process.

Media release:

Last Friday night (12.8.11) at James Cook University’s eMerge Media Space the 2011 winner of the Screengrab New Media Arts Prize was awarded to a collaborative work titled Summertime Flies, created by video artist Jason Robinson and sound artist Nathan Halverson from the USA. The $2000 prize which is sponsored by the School of Creative Arts represents the Media Space’s premier exhibition for the calendar year and attracts a global roster of artists working within the fields of screen based media and electronic arts.

The prize was awarded for the process of this work, described in the Artist’s Statement, as much as for the final product.

Judges Bernadette Ashley, Mitch Goodwin and Dr Steven Campbell awarded this year’s prize to Robinson and Halverson after a lengthy deliberation which saw several other works vying for attention including Paper Memories by Theo Putzu from Spain (with an honorary mention), Winnipeg Stories by Clint Enns from Canada and Clickstan by the Ubermorgen Artgroup from Austria. Australian artists also feature prominently including Sean Scott, Gregory Mackay and Bonnie Lane.

As Mitch Goodwin, New Media Arts Lecturer notes, “The cultural diversity of the works on show is indicative of the Screengrab exhibition’s primary goal, which is to critique screen culture via the very medium which makes the exhibition possible.Publicity for the award, the selection of the media works and the acquisition of the shortlisted entries is all conducted exclusively from screen to screen via digital media networks around the world.”

The Screengrab exhibition will be on show at the School of Creative Art’s eMerge Media Space at James Cook University until 31st August, 2011.Entry is free.

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